Sumter federal prison inmate sentenced for stabbing officers

COLEMAN – An inmate who stabbed two corrections officers because he was upset over the loss of recreation privileges in 2015 had 15 years added to his sentence.

Todd Shepard, 49, was sentenced at the federal courthouse in Ocala on Wednesday on charges of forcible assault of a federal officer, inflicting bodily injury and using a deadly weapon. He pleaded guilty to the charges in January.

The stabbing occurred Sept. 18, 2015 at the Federal Correctional Complex in Coleman.

According to U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman William Daniels, Shepard ambushed and stabbed two federal corrections officers with a sharpened piece of metal. Before being subdued, the inmate repeatedly shouted threats to kill the officers. Daniels said Shepard later admitted that he had attacked the officers in an attempt to draw attention to a recent loss of recreation time.

Shepard already was in prison until 2029 on a federal drug distribution conviction. But, he also has a separate state sentence of life in the 2008 murder of a Missouri law enforcement officer.

At a separate federal sentencing hearing on Wednesday, another inmate, Kurt Michael Adams, 29, had four years tacked on to his sentence for mailing a letter to the White House containing numerous threats to kill then-President Barack Obama and other federal employees.

Inside the envelope, he had placed a harmless white powder that he identified as a “chemical agent,” according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

When confronted by agents, Adams reportedly admitted that he had sent the letter and that he had “meant every word.”

Adams pleaded guilty to mailing threatening communications in the case in February. He mailed the letter in July of 2016, when he was serving a 41-month sentence for making threats to then-Vice President Joe Biden.